I see wild animals, running around like domestic animals

So I'm driving towards the exit of the company last night after work (we are located in an enormous valley), when I take a look in my rear view mirror and suddenly see 4 wild boars(wild pig, see picture) crossing the street!
I thought I was hallucinating, so I stopped the car, looked back and saw 2 full-grown wild boars and 2 little ones running across the street. I never have my camera ready when I need it!


So I thought that nobody was going to believe me when I told my colleagues this morning about what I had seen. But they just said: "Ah, yes. They are always around here. I've seen them several times already."
As if we are talking about the cats of the neighbours.

More health problems

As if the allergy wasn't enough already (thanks for the tips, my dear readers), my throat started hurting on Saturday morning. I immediately blamed the damn air conditioning at work, because one of the lateral vents is blowing directly at me.
So I close the damn thing now and then, only to find it opened again a few days later by one of the maintenance workers.
We already had a notice that we are not allowed to close the green lateral vents because of some weird reason, but my hands are sometimes almost freezing from the cold wind blowing in my direction. So I close it whenever nobody's watching.


Anyway, by Saturday evening I had a mild fever. The throat ache got worse, accompanied by a headache and a dry cough. So when I was still feeling quite weak on Sunday night, I decided not to go to work on Monday and to go see the doctor.

My doctor (A doctor is assigned to you in Spain) is an older man. Usually, He justs asks what the problem is and prescribes a few days of rest to get it out of your system.
But when I went to the doctor yesterday, I had to see a substitute. So I told him about the fever, the throat ache and the headache, and he started to examine my throat and respiration.
And then he asked me with a smile: So tell me, what is the problem?
I could only think: Is this man an idiot? I just told him what the problem was!
And he continued: Because I don't see or hear anything wrong. And a grown 31 year old man like yourself should be able to endure a little throat ache, no?

I felt like a complete idiot at that moment, stupified by what he was telling me.
He prescribed me some soluble powders, while I was wondering why I needed those if there was nothing wrong with me!!??
And when he asked me if I needed a note to rectify my absence at work, I told him no, not wanting him to think that I only had come for that.
So here I am at work again, sucking on some tablets for my throat, with the air blowing at me from the left. I have to find a moment to close that damn thing again.

Damn polen

It's another one of those days when my hayfever is slowly driving me mad.
Yes, I'm one of those poor people who pass half the summer sneezing just because the sun is shining and the flowers are blooming.
Today my nose hasn't stopped running all day, I have been sneezing at least a thousand times and my eyes are swollen, red and prickly.
It makes me want to scream and kick, but I realize that that won't help.
The 3 packages of kleenex I had in my drawer were already empty around noon, so I have to get me a supply of that rough, industrial toilet paper every half hour, that makes me look like Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.

Of course I have a medicine to take, some tablets called Zyrtec, but on days like these even those don't seem to help a lot. And as if sneezing a thousand times isn't tiring enough, these tablets are also sleep inducing. So by the time I'll get home, I will probably be exhausted.


It all started when I was about 16 years old, and since then it has been bothering me every year.
Tests concluded that I'm especially allergic to the polen of birch trees and grasses. And back when I used to smoke, the effect was even worse. I remember studying with tissues stuffed in my nostrils, so I wouldn't have to bother blowing my nose for 2 minutes.
Well, I'm off to get me some more of that terrible sandpaper they call toilet paper.
I'm counting the minutes until I can go home.

World of photography

When surfing the web today, I stumbled upon this website: http://www.woophy.com.
As I thought it is a remarkable photography project, I decided to upload some of my pictures, and cover some more of the world map. You can find me in Brussels, Porto, Hasselt and of course the north of Spain.
With the help of amateur photographers across the world they strive to ultimately cover every inch of the world map with images that represent the world's beauty and peculiarity from all different cultural perspectives.

All work and no play makes Chris a dull boy

It's going to be a long week.
All of a sudden, our team has been asked to attend a training, starting today and until the end of this week, from 6 to 8 pm.
So they decide to give us a training about something we will probably never use in our job, and to give it in our free time. Lucky us.


And of course it starts exactly the day that Mónica will be home a little sooner.
The poor girl has been working very hard the last two weeks, getting up at 7 am and coming home at 8:30 pm.

I had already written here that she is a saleswoman for the most important radio station of the area now, not only selling radio advertisements, but also creating them. And she is doing better than I had ever expected.

The first few days were a bit chaotic and nervebraking. But suddenly she transformed into this professional salesperson, convincing managers to advertise on the radio and creating advertisements and slogans out of nothing. And she actually seems to like it.
Too bad they don't even pay her half of what she is worth. But it's a start, and she is learning very fast.

Another weekend flew by

Mónica is slowly starting to understand that the weekend passes by too fast and that it should have one more day.
On Saturday, we spent too much time thinking and discussing what we would do. The weather was worse than we had expected, so enjoying the sun like we had done last weekend wasn't an option. We were both a little tired, and after the siesta and a few rounds of the very addictive game 'crazy taxi 3', we decided to drive to a new shopping mall in a near village.
We checked out the shops, dined in a restaurant with a serious shortage of staff, and went to see 'The Interpreter' afterwards.
The trailer of the movie had looked very promising to me, but it wasn't as good as I had expected. The plot was a little too complicated and the end was rather disappointing. Mónica even fell asleep during the movie.
Nicole looked younger than ever (apparently she has discovered botox), and Sean penn's nose is growing beyond human proportions.

On Sunday we went to have lunch at Mónica's parents' house again. Since Mónica started working, we hardly see them anymore. Of course we watched the Spanish F1 Grand Prix, supporting the Asturian Fernando Alsonso.
After lunch, I made my mom happy by calling her for mother's day. In Spain it had been mother's day last week.

Talking about speed

Mónica and I both like playing race computer games. I like all type of games, actually. She mainly likes the racing ones. And she doesn't even like driving in real life.
But everytime we ended up in the arcade hall of the shopping mall, we would play a round against each other.
I already had some racing games installed on my computer, like 'Need for speed underground II' or 'Colin McRae Rally 2005', but without a steering wheel it's just not the same.


So when we went shopping in 'el Corte Ingles' last week, we just couldn't resist the offer they had on a Trust steering wheel, even if we don't have much time to use the computer lately. Less since Mónica started working.
So our 'computer room/recording studio' got a new gadget, and we lose the stress of a working day by driving at 120m/h through the streets of a virtual city.

We're speeding up

We finally had the great news that our Internet Service Provider is going to upgrade the speed of their client's connections. Just in time, as I was thinking about upgrading my contract to be able to surf a little faster.
Up until now, we only had a 160 Kbps connection at home. But in the month of May it will be quadrupled, to 640 Kbps, without an extra charge.


Broadband internet connections only started to get widely popular in Spain in 2004, and due to the lack of competition, the speed offered by the ISP's was still very low. But since 2005, the competition is getting tougher and the offered speeds are slowly rising.
But still, for the same price I am paying in Spain, I would have a 5Mbit connection in Belgium.
So what's your speed?

visiting monte Naranco

On Monday morning the weather was quite nice, so we decided to search the Asturian tourist guide for a place we had not visited yet.
The first place I came up with was mount Naranco: a 600 meters high mountain in Oviedo, from where you have a stunning view of the city.


On our way up, we visited two pre-roman churches, constructed in the ninth century. And on top of the mountain, there is the 35 meter high statue of the sacred heart (Sagrado Corazón), that seems to be embracing the city.
We had lunch in the fields overlooking Oviedo and enjoyed the warmth of the springtime sun, until in the afternoon the clouds came rolling in.
By the end of the day, our faces had a beautiful colour.

So I snapped

Has the climate in Belgium changed since I left?
While the temperature in Belgium reached 30C/86F this weekend, here in the north of Spain we had 21C/70F, heavy clouds and an occasional shower. And I just heard that people in Belgium are having Thursday and Friday off this week, while here only Monday was a public holiday.
Why is the grass always greener on the other side of the fence?

My weekend began with this little story.
In March I bought a new digital camera in the local Carrefour supermarket. It came with a promotion of 100 free picture prints, valid until the 30th of april.
So I rushed to Carrefour on Friday evening, carrying my cd containing 93 of my favourite digital snapshots. I just couldn't find 7 more that were worth a print or that I didn't have printed yet. And I was in a hurry, so I didn't really bother.

When I arrived at the supermarket, I handed my cd to the lady at the counter, mentioning the promotion.
She asked: Are there 100 pictures on the cd?
Me: No, just 93.
That's when she said to me in a silly tone: Then it's not valid. The promotion is for 100 pictures. Not 99 and not 101. Exactly 100.
I looked at her in disbelief and that's when I snapped…

You have to know that this was the fourth time that I went to Carrefour with a promotion, and the fourth time that they told me they couldn't give it to me for some obscure reason. In fact, when I arrived, I was already wondering what they were going to invent this time.
And so I snapped.

I made quite a scene, and I'm not very proud of it. I raised my voice more than 1 tone, told her exactly what I thought about their promotions, took my cd, and left. She didn't even see it coming, and looked at me as if she got hit by a train.

So I went home and told Mónica what had happened.
That's when we remembered that her father had bought the same camera when I had bought it, and that he was going to go to Carrefour also that evening to get his 100 free prints.
So she called her dad:
- Dad? Where are you?
º In Carrefour.
- Did you ask for your free prints yet?
º Yes. They are ready in an hour.
- How many pictures did you have? 100?
º No, just 73.

My mouth fell open.

The only explanation we could find was that my scene earlier had somehow changed the rules, and that now it didn't have to be exactly 100 pictures (We checked the promotion papers at home, and there was no rule saying that it had to be exactly 100).
So we rushed back to Carrefour, Mónica went to the counter to hand over the cd (I wasn't going to show my face again), and this time there was no problem.
1 Hour later they were ready: 93 crispy clean pictures.
Why do these kind of things always happen to me?

Excuse me??

Maybe I'm just being a snob, but it bothered me while we were shopping in Belgium during our trip. And it didn't just happen once, it happened 3 times.
Imagine that you try on some clothes in the dressing room of a clothes shop, but they don't fit or you don't like them. What do you do with the clothes when you leave the dressing room?
Well, in 3 different shops during our stay in Belgium we were asked by one of the girls who were working there: 'Could you please put it back where you took it?'.
My mouth fell open in disbelief.
Now tell me, am I being a snob and does this sound normal to you?


On another ocasion, I was about to make a picture in a shopping mall, when all of a sudden a security guard comes running to me, saying: 'sir, sir! You can't make pictures here!'
Can they forbid you to take pictures in the passage of a shopping mall?

We're home again!

Hello again.
We're back home, in Spain. We arrived on Tuesday evening after a very long and tiring trip: an hour and a half to get to the airport in Belgium, 2 hours on the plane, and 3 hours by car again to get home.
It was a good idea to take an extra day off yesterday to rest a little. But today I'm back at work.

Our trip to Belgium was great. The weather got better the day after we arrived, and we had sun and temperatures above 20ºC/68F almost every day.
Our family and friends were all fine, and it was great to see them again after 6 months.
My 2 year old niece Morgane was the star of the week. We had a blast with her. She's absolutely adorable.
My friends all came together for a nice dinner on Saturday night, and after dinner we went out like old times. The biggest news was that my friends Tom and Louisa are expecting a baby.
We visited Brussels together with my parents. But they don't have enough patience for these kind of trips. We saw all of Brussels in about 3 hours. After the trip it felt like we had seen nothing at all.
The communion party of my nephew was fine, but spending five hours eating gets a little boring. They should have organised it a little differently.
Of course we spent a day shopping as well and we even went to club Versuz on Thursday night.
So you can understand that those five days flew by extremely fast, and that we had to plan and calculate to be able to do everything we wanted to do.
But now it's back to reality. Even Mónica is having her first day at her new job today. I'm already curious to know how that worked out.

More pics here

Off to Belgium

Well, this is my last working day of the week. Tomorrow morning, Mónica and I will be traveling to Valladolid, where we will be taking a plane to Belgium in the afternoon. We are going to visit my family and friends in Belgium again, like we try to do every 6 months.
My parents and sisters will be glad to see me again, and we are very curious to see the nephews and niece again. The last time we went, our little niece Morgane couldn't talk yet. Now apparently she doesn't shut up. And she has been practicing with pictures of us to know and say our names. We will also be attending our little nephew's communion party.


I plan to make many pictures and videos, and maybe I will share some with you guys and girls.
So until next Wednesday it will be a little quiet around here. But I will be back with fresh courage and stories. Until then and have a nice week.

Pump it up!

Do you know the arcade machine in the picture? It's an Exceed or 'Pump it up' machine. According to the official website, they can only be found in Spain, Taiwan, Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and the USA.
Before a few weeks, I had never seen one in my life. Until it suddenly showed up in the arcade hall in the local mall. It was standing alone in a corner, flashing its lights and playing jingles to attract potential gamers.
Two weeks ago, when we entered the mall, we suddenly saw a huge crowd at the entrance of the arcade hall. As curiosity is my middle name, I persuaded Mónica to go with me and check out what was going on. We found out that they were all looking, staring in disbelief was more like it, at 2 youngsters on the machine.


Exceed is a dance simulation game, which consists of a projection screen and a dancefloor with 5 pressure sensitive panels. As the music starts, the symbols that are also on the panels of the dancefloor begin to move up the screen with the music. The player has to step on the corresponding panel on the dance floor as each symbol reaches the top of the screen. That way, the player is sort of dancing to the music.
Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well, it looks impossible, I can tell you. Especially when you see those kids, dancing and jumping to the music at a speed so fast that I couldn't even follow the symbols on the screen. People were looking with open mouths at the spectacle.

So I started wondering where these professionals suddenly came from, as I never had seen anybody dancing on the machine before. That's when I started investigating, and found out there is going to be an exceed tournament at the same mall on the first of may. So apparently, they were practicing for the tournament.
Further investigation led me to the official site of the Spanish 'pump it up' community. Apparently there has been already a tournament at our mall in february, and when I looked at the pictures of the event, there they were, the same youngsters.
If we don't forget about the event, we sure will go check it out. And I'm going to take my video camera, because you are not going to believe your eyes when you see what these kids are capable of.

Counting the days

Blogger has been acting strange again the last few days, so I wasn't able to post when I wanted to.
Anyway, we got some great news.
Mónica was supposed to start at her new job yesterday. We had been talking about the fact that she wouldn't be able to go to Belgium with me next week. I knew she could use a break as well, and that she would love to see the little rascals of the family again.
So she decided to be brave and mention to her boss the fact that we had planned a trip. He took it quite well, and said that there was no hurry. If she wanted to, she could start working the day we got back.
So she will be going with me after all. It's better this way.

Due to the bad weather we ended up in the shopping mall again this weekend, buying presents and clothing for those same little rascals. And then we decided to go out and celebrate the fact that Mónica found a job.
So we ended up dancing in our favourite bar 'Bulevar' in Gijon and in a beautiful bar we discovered some time ago, Buddha (see picture), until 4 in the morning.


It had been months since we went dancing. When it's that cold at night, we just don't feel like it.
On Sunday we went to have lunch with Mónica's parents, and cleaned the apartment afterwards.
I'm counting the days until next Wednesday. I really need a vacation.

Spain's worst shame

Spanish security and social experts have expressed great concern over the surge in incidents of domestic violence after 13 Spanish women lost their lives in the first quarter of 2005 in domestic violence incidents.

In 2004, 60.000 women lodged complaints against their husbands or partners.
Spanish authorities say the figure is much higher, given the number of women who suffered various forms of domestic mistreatment but never complained officially. Thousands reportedly stay in abusive relationships because, they say, there is nowhere else to go.

Further worse, 72 women were also killed, including 67 by their husbands or ex-husbands in 2004, according to the statistics released by the Spanish Observatory on violence against women.
They also revealed that 170 women were killed out of domestic violence during the last three years. Feminist groups, however, put the number of victims at 350.

Feminist groups blamed Spanish authorities for dealing with the complaints less seriously than they ought to. They regret the authorities hear from the mistreated women without writing down their complaints.

The government of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has pressed for a number of measures to deter domestic violence since coming to power in March last year.
The measures include allotting 200 policemen and 250 Civil Guard members to intervene immediately to save women facing threats by their husbands, ex-husbands or partners.
Abused women now get financial compensation, and could call a government-run hot line to deliver their complaints.
Zapatero recently described Spain's domestic violence record as the country’s "worst shame" and an "unacceptable evil".

Boredom

I'm a little bored on the job.
There is very little new work coming in lately, so I'm taking it easy on the work I still have assigned to me. A little trick everybody on my team is applying these days.
We don't want to get in the situation where we have no work at all and nothing new is coming in.

So what does a person do all day when he is bored? That's right, surf the web.
I see a lot of strange, great and funny things on the internet in a day. You should see the list of favorites I have gathered in a year.
To avoid this growing list of senseless links but still be able to recall some things I've seen, I decided to place some links here.
It may be just a temporary thing, because I created it out of boredom. But as long as it lasts, whenever YOU are bored, you could check out some strange things I've seen.

A special day

We had some great news today.
Mónica has been offered a job at last. She had done a job interview last week, and the recruiter had said that the people who would get selected for the job would receive a call on Friday. Last Friday. But on Friday nobody called, so Mónica was a little sad all weekend.
Today they finally called. I had told her they were still going to call, but she was convinced they weren't.
She has to go sign her contract and meet her colleagues tomorrow.
She will be selling and making radio advertisements for a national radio channel.

The bad side of the news is that this probably means that I will have to go alone to Belgium at the end of the month, when I will go visit my family. For one week it will be like old times again, me living in Belgium and her living in Spain. Calling, chatting, webcamming and missing each other. She would miss seeing my nephews, I'm sure. And I will be bored most of the time.

Just a thought

Won't it be strange when another pope will be elected?
I've only known one pope in my life.
Now 'the pope' is going to be another guy.
I wonder if this is going to change the Vatican's vision on some important worldly themes, like anti-conception.

Dad's sending pictures

My dad always tries to act as if he knows as much about computers as I do.
He even sends me links that he thinks I might find interesting.
So I giggle when he sends me a link, tells me he discovered a nice program I should try, and I find out he is talking about 'ad-aware'.

Recently he bought a digital camera. Today I finally got the mail I had been expecting since a few weeks.
Apparently he's trying to send me 900 KB pictures, and he's wondering why it is taking so long and why they are not getting through. He will try sending them one by one.
So how do you explain your old man he should resize those pictures before sending them.
I started Googling and I found the ideal program. I tried it out and it is the easiest thing I've ever seen, resizing images with just one click. Check it out: photogadget


Today at 18:00 European time, a new Belgian Groupblog will open its doors. Some 20 bloggers will try to make a difference in the Belgian blogworld. I've been asked by the creators to join in and be their reporter in Spain. Belgian newspapers and radio stations have already mentioned the blog, so if you understand any dutch, check it out, starting this afternoon: www.struikgewas.be